María Teresa –Tessa– of Bavaria and Mesía, princess of the house of Wittelsbach, has a strong link with the Spanish royal family. She is the granddaughter of the infante Fernando María, who married a sister of Alfonso XIII, the infanta María Teresa de Borbón. Her great-grandfather, Luis Fernando, also married an infanta from Spain, María de la Paz, sister of Alfonso XII. Her father is Eugenio de Baviera y Borbón, nephew of Alfonso XIII, and first cousin of Don Juan de Borbón, father of the king emeritus. He was declared infante de grace of Spain, at the request of Alfonso XIII. Tessa of Bavaria, therefore, is the second cousin of King Juan Carlos. Her father had a very close relationship with Don Juan. His wife María de las Mercedes, the mother of the king emeritus, frequently visited his property on the Costa Azul and established an intimate relationship with her mother, Marisol de Messía y Lesseps, daughter of the Duke of Tamames and Count of Mora, Fernando Messía and Fitz-James Stuart. Queen Victoria Eugenia and the princes of Monaco were also regulars at the Bavarian summer home. When Grace moved to Spain she always stayed with Tessa. She was the only Spaniard who attended her wedding.
The family also welcomed Don Juan Carlos in their home in Madrid, when he arrived in Spain to study for high school. The adolescent Don Juan Carlos felt alone far from his parents, in a Spain that he did not know and surrounded by children of the nobility with whom he did not always get along. The Bavarian home was a haven of hospitality. And still today, she went to dinner at her second cousin's house, before leaving Spain at the beginning of August 2020. According to Tessa de Baviera told «Vanity Fair», her last meeting with Don Juan Carlos was just before the pandemic.
Tessa was always an optimistic and fighter woman, despite the fact that her childhood was very sad, because of a birthmark that covered part of her face and that caused her a great complex. She was taken to the United States to have it removed with surgery. She but she was left without a piece of face. Despite the harshness of her fate, she decided that she had a wonderful life and that she should move on. Today, there is hardly a trace of that brand, but Tessa continues to retain the elegant figure that she always had and that has made her part of the lists of the most elegant women in Spain for decades.
In 1962, Tessa married Alfonso Márquez Patiño, Marquis of Coca, third son of the Duke of Grimaldi and Monaco's consul in Marbella. The wedding, held in the Basilica of San Francisco El Grande in Madrid, was one of the events of the year and was attended by the then Princes of Spain, as well as members of the Government, the diplomatic corps and figures from high society. Tessa and Alfonso's marriage broke up, however, in 1981.
The princess studied Arts and Crafts and has always liked to design her wardrobe herself. She worked as public relations in several companies. She is a very enterprising woman who has collaborated in shoe and jewelry export businesses. In the 1980s, she worked with the magazine "Semana" doing interviews with royal figures, such as the Countess of Barcelona or María Gabriela de Saboya, and with the nobility, such as the Duchess of Alba. Later, in 1983, she created her own fashion label, TdB, under which she designed accessories: scarves, gloves, shoes and knitwear. In 1994 she launched two perfumes, one of them bearing her name. In 2015 she relaunched her brand, after a few years of deep sadness in which she lost her mother, María Sol de Messia y Lesseps, and her three brothers, Luis, Fernando and Crista. She designed swimming gloves and hair ties.
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She had two daughters. Myrta Márquez y Baviera was born in 1965 and her godparents were the then Princes Don Juan Carlos and Doña Sofía, a close friend of the Infanta Elena, whom she introduced to the most exclusive Parisian circles when she settled in the French capital with her husband, Jaime de Marichalar. The eldest daughter married in 1994 with Pedro Escudero Aznar, from the high bourgeoisie of the Basque Country. The youngest daughter of the marriage, Sonia, was born in 1969. She married the financier Miguel Matossian y Ossorio. Today about to turn 80, Tessa lives withdrawn from social events and her greatest pride is her five grandchildren, especially her three granddaughters, Cristina Escudero and the sisters Victoria and Sol Matossian, who accompanied her in the TBD project. Now Sol Matossian has created a "lifelong" clothing firm with his partner Virginia Achenza, VienSo, which came to light during the pandemic. She claims that her muse is her grandmother Tessa her. Victoria Matossian is dedicated, for her part, to the organization of events and the management of social networks.
